Thing Vs Exotroopers
by David N. Brown
Summary: In the harshest landscape on Earth, an ancient menace has been rediscovered.  Now, the ultimate warriors are on a rescue mission, but will there be humans to bring back?  David N. Brown resides in Mesa, Arizona.
1. Prologue

**This story was started as an ebook "mini" for sale, but I've decided to put it up here. It was conceived as a blending of Carpenter's "Thing" with the original story "Who Goes There?", with the exotroopers thrown in.**

1931

If anyone had had a watch to check, it would have shown 3 in the morning, but the skies of Antarctica were as bright as day. Yet, the only warmth came from the blazing ruins of an encampment. There had been a dozen men in the expedition, plus sled dogs and cattle, and even with the men crammed in so tight there was hardly room to swing an elbow, that took a fair amount of lumber to burn.

A figure trudged, almost staggering, out of the camp, with three layers of heavy jackets all open to the cold that already pressed at the bubble of heat. He gave it no heed, actually going a little faster. He whirled at the sound of a crash and an unearthly howl. Something moved in the flames, something that was itself only an amorphous mass of flame, something that had no right to be alive. The man drew a revolver and took aim. Then there was a shrill shriek, rising so high that it began to fade into the ultrasonic, and the shape lurched once more before collapsing, for good. The man's shoulders slumped, and the gun dropped from his limp hands into the snow, and he himself followed after.

It could have been seconds, minutes or the better part of an hour before the man in the snow sat up at the sound of approaching footsteps. The newcomer seemed to coalesce out of a haze of falling snow. It was hard even to discern a human shape under the layers upon layers of arctic gear. The man rose abruptly to a crouch, scrabbling for a weapon. Then a deep tenor voice spoke, "Mack!"

"Donald," said the other warily.

The newcomer shifted a burden carried on one shoulder; it was a large pick ax. "All your fires, they warm things up. Won't last long, though. Oughta button up."

"'S okay. Guess we lost track of each other."

"Guess so."

"Did we get 'em all? All of them?"

"Dunno. Thought I saw someun walkin' out. Prob'ly nothin'. Followed a few paces, but I couldn't find no trail."

"Really."

"I don' know 'f we're gonna make it."

"Maybe we shouldn't."

"Mebbe not." Donald hunched down. "Y'know... when I followed... what I thought I saw... coulda sworn... looked a lot like you, Mack."

"If there's any surprises left... I don't think either of us is in any shape to do something about it."

"I s'pose you're right. So what do we do?"

"Just sit here, I guess. Sit... and see what happens."

"Yeah. That doesn't sound too bad." Donald sat down, and after a little while, he took a drink from a flask, and offered it to Mack. The other man smiled as he took it... and with the other hand, he cocked the revolver.


	2. The White Coast

2043

The figure seemed to coalesce out of the snow. It had the shape of a man, but it was formed from pyramids and polyhedra and mechanical servos. The armor was clearly made of solid angled slabs, but the exterior was a covering of fabric and foam, colored pure white. Two wing-like structures came out of the back, and a crown of iron rods ringed the helmet. A rigid steel prosthesis took the place of the third finger of the right hand, clenched in a fist. This was one of the already-legendary finbacks of Serbia's exotroopers, and this particular individual was the no less legendary Zaratustra, also known as Zed. Born in the South African compound of a neo-Nazi cult and raised in Germany by relatives who tried in vain to lead him from the ways of his father, he had ended up imprisoned far from home in Belgrade for the murder of a fellow neo-Nazi. Then he had been freed to fight in Serbia's war with Kosovo and Albania, and soon after admitted for training in the desperately undermanned exotrooper corps. Now, he was still farther from home, hiking over the Ronne Ice Shelf toward the ice-locked shores of Antarctica.

Behind him followed another exotrooper. He carried a weapon that looked like a "super soaker" squirt gun, and was indeed very similar except that what it squirted was burning napalm. This was Zotgjakt, the only ethnic Albanian in Serbia's exotrooper corps. In his struggles to attain some level of respect, he had repeatedly sought out training as a specialist, and one of those specialties was operating a flame thrower. During the Novi Pazar insurrections that triggered the first skirmishes with Kosova, Serbia had fielded a (relatively) compact version of the flame thrower, dubbed the flame carbine, to the outrage of the rest of the world, which had long since replaced their flame throwers with even more devastating thermobaric weapons. Serbia, while well-stocked with thermobaric munitions itself, had seen a niche for a flame thrower in close-in, direct-fire combat, and built one accordingly. The discrete but urgent missive that had summoned the finbacks to the last continent had been very specific and insistent that they were to bring a functioning flame carbine.

Though the flame carbine was about half as heavy as typical mid-20th century flamethrower, it still weighed almost 20 kg when loaded. Only an exotrooper could carry one without a considerable loss of mobility, and even one of them could not conveniently carry all the equipment necessary to keep it functional. The flame carbine's two napalm tanks would provide for only three seconds of continuous fire, and normally only two additional tanks were carried. By the time all of them were emptied, a cartridge of propellant gas would also normally be exhausted, though a manual pump under the barrel could add an extra second or so. At that point, refueling required at least one larger reservoir to refill the napalm tanks and an air compressor to recharge the propellant cartridges. The task of carrying that equipment fell upon the ever-beleaguered support troops known as squires. And so at the rear came two lightly armored figures, who at the start of their storied careers had already been dubbed the Flea and the Tick. The Flea carried a 15-liter reservoir on his back plus 4 filled tanks at his hips. The Tick carried the apparatus for recharging the propellant cartridges, plus another 30 liters of napalm.

"Hey," said the Flea, "what do you think of this mission?"

"What do you think, _ponor_?" the Tick replied. "Why do you even keep talking to me?"

The footgear of the 311A combat exoskeleton added 5 cm to a finback's height, and gave them footprints of Sasquatch proportions. The segmented soles were loaded with shock absorbers, sensors and a variety of spikes and bumps that would retract or extend according to the demands of the terrain. At the moment, especially long spikes gouged and gripped at the ice, and little bursts of warm air regularly de-iced the soles. Reaching a ten-meter cliff of pure ice, Zed extended a set of climbing claws and started up with an impressive spring.

The squires came next. The Flea whooped as he vaulted the top, then swore at the sight, at some remove but not far distant, of another cliff at least 30 m tall. A line was thrown down to the others. Even with the help of the rope, the Tick resorted to continuous kicking and clawing to make his ascent, showering chunks of ice down on Zotgjakt. At the top, he angrily swatted away the Flea's extended hand, dug his claws into the cliff top and hauled himself up. Cracks shot out from his fingerholds, and as he mounted the cliff top, more than a meter of ice ponderously collapsed out from under him. Zed was there in an instant. He grabbed the squire by the arm and yanked him to safety, seeming more impatient than heroic.

From the first voyages of discovery in the 1800s to the proliferation of research stations beginning in the 1950s, human activity in Antarctica had concentrated disproportionately in about one-third of last continent, on the west side a mountain chain simply called the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. Apart from a few incursions beyond the mountains during the race for the South Pole, exploration of the other two-thirds of the last continent had to wait until the late 1920s. What the explorers discovered was a vast expanse called the Antarctic Plateau, and described without the slightest hint of exaggeration as the coldest, driest, windiest, most inaccessible and most uninhabitable on the planet.

With an average annual temperature of -50 degrees C, average precipitation of 5 cm per year, average elevation of 3 km and average windspeed of 80 km per hour, the environment of the Plateau was exceptionally bad even by Antarctica's standards. Signs of anything resembling human habitation were likewise scarce even for the last continent. Out of hundreds of past and present Antarctic research stations, the largest to be sustained on the Plateau was probably the Russians' Vostok Station, where, on a pitch-black winter's day in July 1983, a dozen or so poor frozen bastards had measured a temperature of -128 degrees F, the lowest ever recorded to the satisfaction of the keepers of the record books. Even the record keepers allowed that Plateau temperatures could be even lower, particularly closer to the Plateau's four-thousand meter summit. _That_ was the destination of the exotroopers.

The finbacks made their way inland from Prydz Bay, where a submarine had emerged through the ice to deposit them. With the use of stilt accessories, included in the corps' armory since the arrival of the first exoskeletons but previously neglected due to the generally limited lifespan of a soldier 3 meters tall on a battlefield, they were able to move at up to 40 km per hour. But the rough terrain required long stretches of marching or climbing with their standard footgear, and with or without the stilts, pratfalls and close calls continued. The Flea slipped after his deicers clogged, knocked Zotgakt off his feet as he slid, and the both of them stopped just short of the edge of a crevasse. When they strode over another crevasse on stilts, the Tick once again had the ice collapse underneath him on landing, and narrowly escaped with two more very quick steps. Then there was an unexpected and unexplained halt as Zed silently studied a stretch of the ice seemingly indistinguishable from the rest. He stamped three times with one of his stilts, then climbed down, knelt and punched down with enough force to drive his prosthesis into the ice. A vast web of thin cracks suddenly erupted in the ice, and Zed beat a hasty retreat as a whole new crevasse opened in the ice.

After a day and a half, they had progressed more than 300 km, and caught their first sight of rock coming through the ice."Hey!" the Flea said. "Hey, Zed, look at this!" He pointed back at the glacial terrain they had crossed There, at the margin where descending glaciers merged with the ice shelf on the bay, was a ragged but unmistakable semicircle two kilometers wide. "Y'know, it looks almost like a flying saucer wreck."

Zed chuckled. "That is the MacCrae Inlet," he said. "It was first recorded in unpublished notes from the BANZARE Expedition of 1929-1931, and mentioned occasionally in later publications. It probably would have received more attention if a research with ties to occultism had not claimed that it was a wrecked `flying saucer', and that the wreck was being secretly studied by the US military. Nonsense, of course. If a spaceship were to crash, it would have the same fate as an ordinary meteorite: Its most visible trace would be an impact crater, and any parts of it that did not disintegrate completely would be either deeply embedded in the crater or scattered over untold kilometers. And that- hypothetical spaceship notwithstanding- is undoubtedly what happened. By the best estimates, the event occurred two million years ago. At the time, Antarctica was already extensively covered in ice, but there were still forests and terrestrial megafauna. The impact appears to have come at the time of the final decline of the ecosystem, and it has been speculated there was some connection. The impact formed a crater, and as the ice advanced, the crater was covered, but not enough to conceal its shape.

"Not that it has always been as you see it. One hundred years ago, or even twenty, the edges of the ice would have extended much further, and been considerably thicker. The scientists blame that on man-made global warming, but it is nothing new. For better or worse, the ice shelf has always been shifting, sometimes going forth, and sometimes drawing back. Men may push it, one way or another, but with or without them, the cycle will go on. Now, let us go."

Another pratfall came as Zotgjakt was half-buried in a slide of snow and ice chunks from a continuous line of similar debris at the bottom of another, especially formidable cliff. "A closer approach would appear inadvisable," Zed said succinctly. He loaded an attachment on his left forearm shield: a spear gun. The spear Zed loaded was larger than was standard, with a longer cable and a rocket booster for extra range. As the top of the cliff was clearly no more stable than the bottom, he aimed instead for a relatively pristine ledge halfway up. The harpoon lodged, with nothing worse than a short shower of snow, and Zed cut the line and spiked the end in the ice at his feet. Up they climbed.

After following the ledge for twenty meters, they came to what had from the ground looked like nothing more or less than a recess in the ice. It was, in fact, the bottom of a sizable crevasse, just wide enough for them to walk into. Zed led them silently onward, marching uphill through the looming yet claustrophobic chasm. "Like a _jebanje_ birth canal," the Tick muttered.

"Say," said the Flea, "didn't you say you were Russian?"

"Yeah," the Tick said.

"But you speak Srpski just fine," the Flea said.

"Sure," said the Tick.

"I mean, you talk like it was your first language."

The Tick's mood was not helped by a shower of debris from above. "I grew up in Belgrade, okay?"

"So your parents came from Russia?"

"Well... three of my grandparents did."

"Uh-huh... Do you speak Russian?"

There was a long silence. "I've learned, all right?" the Tick answered irritably. "I just haven't gotten good at regular conversation."

"Okay... So if you were born in Serbia... and your parents were born in Serbia... and you speak Srpski... why not just call yourself a Serb?"

The Tick pondered for a moment. "Okay, why don't you tell me this," he said. "If somebody who says he's a Serb lives in, say, Bosnia... and was born in Bosnia... to parents who were born in Bosnia... and he talks just like a Bosniak... Why not just say he's a Bosniak?"

The Flea pondered this for rather more than a moment. "Okay," he said, "touche."

More silence followed, except for crunching and occasional crashing. The Tick was showing signs of unease, and all but jumped when a weird sound for all the world like a howl echoed through the crevasse. After the better part of an hour, Zed loaded another harpoon for an ascent the rest of the way. As he climbed up, there was a crash and a shout from the Tick.


	3. Impact

Zed all but dropped back to the crevasse floor. "What happened?" he inquired, sounding neither worried nor unkind.

"I saw something move," the Tick blurted. "Something alive! It- Okay, I know this is gonna sound funny, but- I coulda sworn it had three red eyes."

Zed looked disconcertingly unperturbed. "What did the rest of it look like?" he said.

The Tick began to sound uncertain. "I didn't really get a good look at it. It was kinda in the shadows, with the eyes sorta glowing. You know, like a cat. Except red. Except... Y'know, it looked like it coulda been a dog."

"Hey," said the Flea, "that would make sense. A dog could've escaped from a research station."

"A dog with three eyes," Zed said.

"Well, yeah, that part's a problem."

"I am going to deviate from procedure," Zed said. "I will ascend last. Tick, you go first." As his command ascended, Zed drew back, and discretely dropped a small silvery object in the snow. He walked away, briskly. A short while later, a thunderous sound roared through the crevasse, and the cycle of the ice went a tiny bit faster.

On the third day, the sun set. It would not rise again for four months. By the fourth day, they were well into the inner plateau. As far as anyone could tell, Zed had yet to sleep. His sleep was eccentric to begin with, as he typically stayed awake for three days at a time and then slept for 24 hours (throughout which he typically stood on one foot). When it was required, he could go longer. It was during these times that he was most susceptible to a tendency to see and respond to things that, by others' reckoning, didn't exist. He might slip even further from reality by slipping into a kind of dream state even as he walked. At the moment, if anyone had been able to see from inside his mind's eyes, they would have seen a landscape of polar forest, in which roamed animals like nothing alive. Here was a ground sloth the size of a black bear, digging up roots and grubs with dull but enormous claws. There, in the middle distance, a herd of liptoterns, shaped like gracile camels with snouts like tapirs, watched from a further slope by a phorhusracid ground bird, big as an ostrich but with a raptor's hooked beak. Over there, behind a screen of brush, the gleaming eyes and teeth of _Thylacosmilus_, the marsupial sabertooth.

"Hey Zed!" In a moment, Antarctica was back before Zed's eyes. Zotgjakt stood before him, and the Flea and the Tick were pointing at a slope ahead of them, visible by the light of a southern aurora which the finbacks' visors made as bright as daylight. There had been a slump in the ice, enough to offer a view of the rock beneath. In the ice itself was a nearly opaque ridge, and a hint of a gouge in the rock beneath. The shape was a tear drop, about 30 meters wide and 100 long, which tapered to a streak of a tail that stretched out of sight.

"Do you think that's from another meteor impact?" the Flea said. "Maybe a piece from the one that hit the bay?"

Zed studied the scene intently. "It does appear consistent with a highly oblique meteor strike," he said. "But it could not be connected with the bay event. For ejecta from there to land this high would require a steep angle, whereas this would require the object to strike at very nearly horizontal. Therefore, separate events." The other finbacks moved on, but Zed lingered. In his mind's eye, he saw the Pleistocene landscape again, now lit by the fire of an enormous falling star. As the star passed overhead, a smaller flame broke free, to streak straight for the plateau.

The first indication of humanity was a great, skeletal tower, studded with dishes, antennae and less classifiable gizmos, upslope and still kilometers away. "That the base we're supposed to get to?" the Tick asked with more than usual sourness.

"Not precisely," Zaratustra said. "_That_ is the main array of an automated observatory. The upper Plateau is actually the ideal location for ground-based astronomical research- ideal, of course, apart from the problems of supplying a crew, all of which were solved by creating a series of wholly automated observatories. The equipment has been in great demand, and was repeatedly upgraded and expanded. Eventually, things reached the point where it was deemed necessary to have a crew. Not to run the equipment, _per se,_ as the observatory's primary functions remain automated or at least under remote control. Rather, the crew is responsible for maintenance of the observatory, which in practice consists almost exclusively of supplying power and an uninterrupted data stream. Their quarters were built at some distance away, I gather in no small part to ensure that they did not affect the observatory's sensors."

"Okay," said the Tick, "then why are we here?"

"In the last two seasons, the maintenance crew has also been performing some exploration and research, particularly sampling from newly exposed layers of the ice sheet. Eleven days ago, they reported that they had rediscovered an abandoned camp from around 1930. Evidently, it was used by a team from the BANZARE expedition, which disappeared while mapping the interior. Evidently, since that time, a number of people have been concerned that it should be found... and a few others seem to have felt that it was to be avoided. In any event, nine days ago, a second transmission reported that a `biological specimen' had been brought back to the maintenance crew's base. After that, transmissions ceased, except for outgoing data. Our orders are to locate the team, and provide any assistance they may require."

"With a flamethrower?"

"Ours is not to question why," said the Flea.

"Yeah, don't ask, don't tell," said the Tick, "and we're the ones who take it in the rear."

The first sign of the base was a line of five windmills, and these offered a clear sign that something was wrong. A strong crosswind should have had them spinning steadily. One _was_ spinning quite quickly, but only because the blades were loose from the transmission that converted their motion to power. Of the rest, one was immobile, another nearly so, one was clearly slowing down, and the last intermittently stopped and started because a mechanism designed to turn the windmills into the strongest wind had stopped working. "The windmills are one of three power sources for the observatory," Zaratustra said in answer to the unasked question. "The other sources are a large array of solar panels and an experimental generator based on geomagnetic field flux. Speaking of solar power, we should begin our return journey within 48 hours. Sundown comes in another three days."

"Huh," said the Flea. "When does the sun come back up?"

"Four months. And after dark, the weather is _considerably _worse."

Soon, another tower loomed into view, the base's communication tower. Just beyond was something like a squat onion dome. It was, in fact, a giant fabric balloon 20 m in diameter, made rigid with a plastic spray and moored to a ring-shaped platform, supported on one side by stilts jutting out of the slope. A corridor ran from the base to the tower, and the entrance was at the end of a short branch in the corridor. Directly adjoining the dome was a semicylindrical garage. The Tick approached first. "No go on infrared," he said. "The walls are opaque."

"Well, they're pretty much solid insulation," said the Flea, "you'd figure they'd keep heat in."

"I don't suppose we brought narrow-band radar?" said the Tick.

"I requested an NBR device, and my request was very firmly refused," said Zed. Zotgjakt was already helping him unlimber a (relatively) compact bullpup .50 rifle fitted with an NBR scope.

"Visibility is poor," Zaratustra said. "I can locate all six personnel. Four are in the main base, two are in the tower. Curious... One of the men in the tower appears to be tied to the support beams."


	4. Chimera

At the main entrance to the base, a knock came twice. Then Zotgjakt shoved the door open. "Anybody home?" he shouted. From the tower end of the corridor came Zed, behind a grizzled-looking prisoner. "What about the one who's tied up?" the Albanian quarried. Shouting could be heard from the tower.

"Still tied up," Zed said. "On the whole, it would seem most prudent to ask why he is tied up before we do anything about it.

"You want to know why he's tied up?" the captor-turned-prisoner shouted. He pointed to a bandage on his mostly bald head. "He did this to me! With an ax!"

"Really?" said Zotgjakt. "That, from an ax? Looks like his heart wasn't in it, then."

"Or his aim was remarkably poor," Zaratustra amended.

When they entered the dome, the Flea and the Tick were waiting. "Nobody gave us any trouble," said the Tick. "I guess introductions are in order. This is Thorson, basically head of the station." He pointed to a clean-shaven man with hair going to grey. "This is Irina Moskowic, the medical officer."

He pointed to a dark-haired woman, who said, "Please, call me Irene."

"Okay, and this is Ilse Karlsen, a technician." The Tick pointed to a buxom Nordic beauty who looked like she belonged in either a Wagner opera or a Nazi recruiting poster, then to a man with a long, scraggly blond beard. "This is Lars Olsen, also technician. This is Matthew Jackson, assistant tech, and Nalesh Pu- po- eh, something." He waved to two more men, one clearly from India, then pointed to Zed's prisoner. "He would Ray Colby, a tractor driver, and I gather the guy they tied up is Jason Andrews, the science coordinator. And, well... I think you need to see something in the garage."

Irene led the Tick and Zaratustra into the dim garage, but what he looked upon in his mind's eye was the polar forest. Trees blazed all over the mountainside, and here and there pieces of debris were still hurtling out of the sky, but already, the flames were burning themselves out. From behind a thin screen of smoke and dull flame came a keening screech, which Zed somehow knew, as any animal in the forest surely would, as the cry of a ground sloth in distress.

Just why a sloth would make such a cry was a puzzle to any rational observer. For one thing, an adult sloth sufficiently provoked was more dangerous than even the biggest predators on the continent. For another, if a sloth did end up in distress, any cry would almost certainly attract the attention of a predator before it drew another sloth. Except, perhaps, there was an advantage in drawing one predator to fight another, which was what happened now. A sabertooth scuttled briskly through the brush, while a phorusrhacid stalked imperiously down from a mountain ridge. They burst into the clearing, into a scene of unfathomable strangeness even in the strange Antarctic ecosystem.

Sloths were essentially herbivorous, but plants were not their only diet. They would avidly consume insects, just like their close kin, the anteaters and armadillos, and occasionally they would consume a carcass. It was, perhaps, the hope of such a meal that had drawn the sloth to the meter-long bluish shape sprawled on the edge of the elliptical crater. A strange trail showed that it had crawled from the crater, surely injured or else struggling in an environment as alien to it as it was to Earth, on appendages that were not limbs yet not quite tentacles. It had evidently been slumped in the already-refreezing mud when the sloth blundered upon it. Now the strange creature was erect, grappling with the sloth in what looked for all the world like a half-nelson. Three piercing red eyes and a gorgon's mane of tentacles marked the presumable head, but there was no sign of a mouth unless it was a proboscis-like protuberance that seemed to merge with the sloth's neck. Horribly, one of the appendages was taking on a new shape- the credible if imperfect likeness of the sloth's clawed hand.

The bird took one look, shrieked and turned to flee. But already, an appendage was _growing_ toward it, and before it could take a step, the pseudopod arced around to pierce the breastbone. The sabertooth was not so easily panicked. It crouched lower, then it leaped, with jaws yawning at right angles and beyond, and sickle thumb claws extended. As it sprang, a second head erupted from the invader's back, a misshapen effigy of the predatory bird's face. Then a cleft opened between the heads, and as the sabertooth sailed in, a ring of crushing teeth contracted. A moment later, another face, with saber teeth and a half-moon chin, erupted from the increasingly amorphous blue mass...

...And the same mass lay in the hangar, a chimera (as the doctor had called it) of edentate, avian, marsupial and extraterrestrial, frozen in place, with large portions deteriorated down to mummified flesh or bare bones. Zed looked to Irene. "You see our problem," she said. "The chimera... organism was attacked by the most formidable creatures then in existence on the continent. Its response, depending on point of view, was either to consume them and take their shape, or to make them symbionts with itself. We believe that the process was interrupted when the terrestrial animals- or what remained of them- died, from causes we can't determine. It is as if all the biological processes of every terrestrial cell... simply stopped."

Zed nodded. In his mind's eye, he saw another falling star descending from the heavens, only this one halted partway. As the chimera dragged itself deeper into the crater, the star unleashed a column of light that fell first upon the bay, then swept inland...

"The chimera's cells, in contrast, went dormant," Irene continued. "They remained dormant until it was found by a team from the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition, which disappeared shortly after reporting what they found. Then we found the ruins of their camp. Seven human bodies, a number of dogs, and... this.

"The evidence would indicate certain limitations. First, it is virtually certain that the chimera cannot assimilate dead tissue. It is difficult to demarcate fully where terrestrial tissue ends and the chimera begins, except that the terrestrial tissue is dead. The first discoverers were able to identify the dead tissue, and when we performed tests ourselves, the only differences from the notes we recovered could be wholly accounted for by the greater precision of our own tests. Thus, nothing was added to the chimera's own mass.

"Second, the chimera appears to assimilate only animals with a mass equal to or greater than its own. The BANZARE team reported many exceptionally preserved remains in addition to the chimera, including an assortment of invertebrates, small mammals, and birds. Presumably, if the chimera had been able to assimilate them, it would have. Even more significantly, bacteria in the stomachs of the partially assimilated animals showed no signs of assimilation; hence, there seems to be no possibility of the chimera's tissue becoming single-celled organisms.

"Third, the chimera is substantially incapable of functioning in low temperatures. It can survive being frozen solid, but it becomes... _sluggish _even at temperatures approaching freezing.

"We assume that is why we were able to recapture it..."


	5. Who's who?

"They ain't human, I tell ya," said Andrews. "They're all Things! Every one of 'em!"

"I don't get your reasoning," Jackson said, not unkindly. "If we're all these `Things', why wouldn't we just kill you and be done with it?"

"Yeah, or Thingy you," the Flea said.

Zaratustra was making a casual sweep with the NBR scope. "I cannot say if they are all human," he said, "but they look human inside and out. Now, I would like this clarified... You recovered the chimera from the ice, and then you _deliberately _thawed the carcass?"

"We needed to get through the ice to perform a dissection," Irene said. "We also believed it would be an opportunity to observe the organism's muscular functions."

"Yes, you certainly did that... Was anyone on guard?"

"Yes, Puttappakupalishi," said Thorson. "He says he fell asleep."

"And no one else noticed a creature weighing at least 500 kg was going for a stroll until it crossed your base?"

"Yes," Thorson said. "In hindsight, there were major oversights."

Andrews' voice was quieter yet no less intense as he made his rebuttal: "You don't understand. It's _different _from us, see? If we're threatened, if any Earthly creature that's ever lived is threatened, the first thing we try to do is eliminate the threat. But a Thing tries to _become_ the threat. And if that doesn't make sense to us, it doesn't prove anything. Maybe it has reasons. Maybe it avoids killing so it can assimilate more later. Maybe it needs to preserve a Thing-prey ratio. Maybe it's staging an experiment, to see what happens if people are warned. But one of those Things doesn't _need_ a reason _not_ to fight, any more than we need a reason to fight. It's all about what comes natural!"

"Huh," said the Tick. "When you put it that way, it sounds downright decent."

Andrews shook his head vehemently. "Uh-uh! Don't get fooled. The only thing that Thing wants is to be everything, so there's nothing else left to kill it."  
>"Oh, <em>Gott in Himmell<em>, he frightens me so," Karlsen murmured. Abruptly, she pressed herself against the Flea. "You will get us out, won't you?"

"Uh... Yeah, of course," the Flea said. "Just as soon as we can."

"So," Zotgjakt said to Zed, "obviously, the first thing we do is take that thing in the hangar out and torch it."

"_Obviously,"_ said Zed. "But that could be... complicated. If I am not mistaken, it was already set on fire before..."

"Yes," Irene said, "the BANZARE camp was burnt down to the ice. They used kerosene and petrol, not in large quantities. The damage to the chimera and to the human bodies was limited."

"Bodies!" Zed exclaimed. "Yes, you mentioned bodies! Where are they?"

"In the medical lab," Irene said.

"Did you test for chimera tissue?"

"We have no such tests," Irene said. "If assimilation is complete, by all indications, the chimera's tissue is indistinguishable from that of the assimilated organism. The only conclusive indication is whether the specimen can revive." She added, "The bodies have been in my lab since we brought them back."

"I see," Zaratustra said. "That can pass for the moment. Do you believe that someone in the camp could have been assimilated by the chimera?"

"I would consider it... a certainty."

The one named Colby, a big, grizzled American, burst into the discussion. "Here's an idea," he said. "You keep raving about Things. Well, then, what about you? Wouldn't _you_ be the perfect cover? I mean, who's going to suspect the guy who says he wants to kill everyone who could be a Thing? What say we find out?" He raised a pick ax. "If you're one of those Things, I could put this right in your brain, and you'd be just fine. If not- well, what's killing one guy by mistake compared to everybody on Earth getting turned into Things? Isn't that what you're saying?"

The Indian ran up from behind and tried to grab the weapon, and got a brutally broken nose for his troubles. Jackson struck Colby in the throat and pinned him to the wall. "Cool off!" he bellowed.

"Enough," the Tick said, pulling them apart. He glanced back at Andrews. "If they're all Things, you'd expect they would get along better."

"Don't mean nothing," Andrews said. "Every Thing could part of one Thing, held together with something like telepathy. It could stage arguments and fights like a puppet show. Or maybe... Maybe the imitation is so perfect, even the Things think they're still human. But... I'm sure I'm human. Or am I? What if I'm a Thing? What if we're all Things? Or what if I'm the _only_ Thing? The only way to stop the Thing for sure is to kill everyone... _including myself!_"

The Tick knocked Andrews unconscious with an open-handed slap. "That's enough existentialism for the day," he said. "Zed! What- uh, what's going on?"

"Nothing good," Zaratustra said. "Where is the Flea?"

"Right- uh. Huh."

"So, uh, Dr. Karlsen," the Flea said as he followed the woman into the central chamber of the station, "did you have something to show me?"

"Please, call me Ilse," she said.

"Right, okay, Ilse, so, what did you want to show me?" the Flea asked. He followed, somewhat hesitantly, into a recess behind a piece of machinery.

She smiled. "Isn't there something you would like to show me? They all say, you're all man underneath..." She felt a tire belt that covered his pelvis.

"Hey. Whoa! Thanks and all, and I'm not sayin' the answer's no. Just not while I'm on duty!"

"I understand," she said, and smiled again as she raised a hand that ended in a ground sloth's sickle claw.


	6. Thing 1, Thing 2

Thorson called for Jackson and Colby, and Zotgjakt summoned the Tick, leaving the Indian technician alone to watch Andrews. "Am I correct to understand," Zed said to the technician and driver, "that transportation and communications are cut off, apart from the observatory data stream?"

Colby laughed bitterly. "So, they got _worried_ when we were out of touch for a few weeks? I wouldn't've thought they'd notice! Do you know, our data stream per hour is equivalent to 24 hours of programming on a _thousand_ TV stations? But we have to make do with a few measly gigabytes per day, and somehow, somebody always needs a little more bandwidth for astronomical data to cut into even what we get! So, 5 minutes to check email, if you aren't crowded out by some new experiment! A day's allowance to check out some porn! Damn, the Pony Express could do better than we got!

"But yeah, sure, we're cut off. The first thing Andrews did when he cracked was destroy the comm interfaces we use. Then he totaled both my tractors. Oh, and he got into our store of explosives, thermite, TNT, C4, and some specialty concoctions. We got to him just when he was ready to connect the detonator. We still don't know where he planted it all, and a lot of the charges we can find look ready to blow if we try to remove them."

"We can assist," Zaratustra said calmly. "Where do you keep the explosives?"

Zotgjakt and the Tick peered into the open door of the garage. "All right," Zotgjakt said in distaste, "we take it outside, then torch it. Simple."

"Hang on- with all due respect- let's think this over," said the Tick. "The science lady says it went into hibernation or something from the cold. So what will it do covered in napalm at a thousand degrees? Go into overdrive?"

"Yeah. Good point... We should pack some explosives in first. Thermite, maybe."

"Or we could carve it up," the Tick said, pointing to a heavy-duty chainsaw.

"We do both. And hurry, we could be warming it up just standing here. And we oughta have the extra tanks handyyyy... Where's the Flea?"

"Only about a third of the base is here on the surface," said Thorson, as he walked with Zaratustra back to the corridor. "There's a series of supply rooms under the platform, and the main generator rooms are recessed into the ice..."

They almost collided with Zotgjakt and the Tick, the latter of whom carried a chain saw. "Where's the Flea?" Zotgjakt hastily asked.

"What, the other guy?" Colby said casually. "I saw 'im going off with Ilse. She always tries to break in a new guy first chance she gets... They went in there, I think." He pointed in the direction of a door to the center. Zotgjakt and the Tick rushed over, and the others followed, vaguely curious. Zotgjakt tensed at the sound of a dull thump. The Tick ran to the door, fumbling with the starter for the chainsaw, reaching it right about the moment when the Flea crashed through the door minus helmet.

Then from the darkness came a shape, running- no, _leaping_- on too-long legs and flailing even longer arms. The Tick, still trying to start the chainsaw without perceptible success, staggered into the path of the Thing as it came flying with outthrust legs and a scream like nothing heard in a million years There was scarcely time for a glimpse of the Thing before impact...

Which was when the chainsaw started.

A crash and a spray of gore sent a severed head flying, to bounce off Zed's breastplate to land at his feet, and an arm came flopping after, while the Tick and the majority of the Thing both went reeling back. The combatants rebounded from the walls and slammed back together, propelled less by the terror and fury of battle than by the pure physics of equal and opposite reactions. The Tick, half-stunned virtually blind besides, came staggering and flailing like a drunk trying to hit a pinata. The mutilated Thing came lurching at him on terror bird legs, with a pseudopod already growing from the stump of the neck.

Zed leaned forward to peer at the head almost between his feet. The face was that of a beautiful woman, except that the chin drooped down in two long flanges, sheaths for a pair of saber teeth. Red eyes rolled up, and the jaws began to open. The jaws gaped, pushing the flanges against the floor, which was actually enough to roll the head end over end, straight for Zed's ankle. He sidestepped, drawing his sidearm in the same instant. "Look out behind you!" Thorson cried. Zed turned his head, to see the Thing's severed hand climbing up the wall like a spider, trailing a long whip tail that had presumably been the forearm. Even as Zed turned, the tail lashed around his neck, and the hand leaped for his face mask- only to be blown apart in midair.

The Thing feinted at the Tick with a slash of a sloth claw, bounded back to avoid a wild swing, then closed with a short hop and kicked. Huge talons raked across the Tick's abdomen, digging for a gap between the segments of the flexible belly armor, until the Tick struck back with a clumsy but highly effective slash of the chainsaw. Again, the combatants reeled back, and this time the Tick had the misfortune to get his weapon lodged in the wall. The Thing was out the better part of one foot, but made do hopping on the other. By then, it had regenerated its head, producing an approximately avian visage that looked like a collaboration between Pablo Picasso and H.R. Giger. As the Tick struggled to dislodge the saw, the st came forward in short hops, snapping a beak lined with pointed teeth. The Tick put his foot to the wall and gave a last heroic tug, and at last the saw came loose, in a mighty swing that carved a deep gash in the ceiling before cleaving the mass of the Thing in two the long way.

Zed pulled the still-squirming tail from around his neck with visible effort. "Throw it down and step back!" Zotgjakt shouted. The acting sergeant disdainfully tossed the tentacle across the room and booted the head after it, then the Albanak sprayed them both with a fraction of a second's worth of napalm. The tail slithered for a meter or so before succumbing, while the head managed a single roll before it ruptured like an overcooked eggplant.

"Get over here!" the Tick shouted. The Thing was split in two pieces, but was still quite active, as spilled viscera writhed across the floor like hungry worms. The Tick took a step back from a questing tendril, only to draw two more. Then Zotgjakt fired, emptying a tank, and turning the Thing into a mass of flame that writhed and slithered all the more. The Tick yelled and beat a retreat, with the squirming entrails still after him. Zotjakt followed, spraying the entire second tank. Unfortunately, the Indian chose that moment to run back from the tower to see what was the matter, and half his body was lit up. The Indian went shrieking down the corridor and out the entrance, while the Thing made a final surge in pursuit of the Tick. Zotgjakt started to give chase, before cursing and running back to get his spare tanks from the Flea.

Zotgjakt got halfway through replacing the second tank before he froze. Just past a doorway and around a corner, the Thing continued to blaze, and the light from the flames made it clear that it was no longer moving. Zotgjakt jogged to the doorway, with the semi-conscious Flea stumbling after. They beheld the Thing, still feebly writhing but unable to pull its mass any further along, lying at the Tick's feet. He stared in shock, then looked up, and his visor locked on the Flea. "You!" he said. "You, you stupid-!" That was when they heard a load crash, from the direction of the garage, and the sudden influx of wind.

Zotgjakt rushed back, cursing in earthy Geg Albanian dialect, falling silent only as he burst into the garage. The Flea was first to come behind him, and looking, said in succinct Serbo-Croatian, "Oh, _kaka_."

The garage door was smashed and caved out. The object that was the original Thing was gone.


	7. Split

The finbacks stood, staring out into the snow, until the acting sergeant spoke from right behind them. "Well?" said Zed. "Go after it. Destroy it!"

Zotgjakt was out what remained of the door in an instant. The squires hustled after him. The Tick looked back and shouted, "Take care of yourself!"

Zed inclined his helmet for a moment before turning around. He shouldered his rifle, and turned on the NBR scope. His brisk strides became a jog when the screams from the Indian became a strangled gargle, followed immediately by shouts and more screams from the others. He burst into the chamber where the corridor met the main base. That was when a bloodied ax smashed the NBR scope.

The wind was rising, and with it came a haze of snow that did not so much fall as fly horizontally, like a filmmaker's impression of stars seen from hyperspace. "I don't get this," the Tick said. "The lady said, this chimera whasit goes dormant in the cold. So why chase it? It's not going far, and it's not like it's going to find anything else to eat, or be, or whatever. We could at least wait until we have things sorted out in the base!"

"A sudden storm like this could bury the creature in a matter of minutes," Zotgjakt said. "We can't assume we will be able to find it later. And, we can't think only of the present. What's a hundred years, or a thousand, or ten thousand, to a Thing that woke from a sleep of a million years? That's why Zed sent us after it. If we don't destroy the Chimera this night, every generation of men to come will be in danger. There! A spoor!" A line of three or four tracks had not quite been covered or obliterated, and appeared to turn left.

"Hey," said the Flea, "which way goes back to the base?"

Even Zotgjakt paused. "No problem," he said, "just check on board GPS. That way!" He pointed confidently, but on a moment's consideration the gesture became a more tentative wave. "Well, that general direction."

They proceeded, not quite as quickly. The Tick muttered to himself: "General direction? We're practically at the south pole; how many general directions are there?"

Zotjakt paused at something dark half-buried in a rut in the snow. "The head and partial torso of a sloth," he said. "The Thing fell, and this broke off when it got back up Probably dead tissue that was never assimilated, but there's no taking chances." He gave it a short blast, then, unsatisfied at the relatively perfunctory blaze, worked the pump and gave it a full tank.

"Want another tank?" the Flea asked.

"No, but we're about due for more gas," Zotgjakt answered. The Flea went to the Tick for a replacement propellant cartridge, but by the time he got it the Albaniak was jogging after a wispy trace of a trail. The Flea broke into a full run to catch up with Zotgjakt, not slowing when he stopped. Then Zotgjakt gave an urgent signal to halt, and the Flea, trying to halt, instead slipped, fell on his rump and went sliding straight for the edge of an ice cliff. The Flea dug into the ice with both hands, and managed to stop himself just when his feet went over the edge, but in his desperate maneuvers the cartridge he had risked his life to deliver was flung away to land somewhere in the snow.

"All right," the Flea said as he scrambled to his feet, "looks like this solved itself..."

"Maybe," Zotgjakt said. Turning, he surveyed what could be seen of the Antarctic landscape. Over the crest of a ridge, windmills were spinning; it did not help his mood to realize that they put the base in nearly the opposite direction from what he had thought. Nearer at hand were slumps and bumps in ice and snow, with occasional protrusions of rock. His visor locked on the one spot where the surface was almost completely flat. That was enough for him to pump the flamethrower, while the Flea dived to dig for the propellant cartridge. Just as Zotgjakt took aim, the Tick caught up, stopping right on the level patch of ground.

"Hey guys," he said, "what's u-?"

The Tick was flung aside by the Thing that erupted from the snow. Its form could scarcely be called a shape, for its wild assemblage of jumbled and distorted parts defied any description, unless it was simply that it had the rough semblance of a snake. It reared straight up, meters high, then lunged forward like an inchworm doing somersaults. Zotgjakt fired in quarter-second blasts, like a gunslinger emptying a six shooter. His first and strongest shot only threw up a cloud of steam from the hiding place the Thing had vacated, and each one thereafter was shorter and more diffused. Even so, he set the chimera alight several times over, yet it only came faster. His last shot did little more than spray a puddle of fire at his feet, as the Thing reared up in a column of fire.

Zotgjakt would surely have been overwhelmed, either crushed or simply knocked from the cliff, if the Thing had not shied away from the steam of his otherwise ineffectual shot. It was scarcely a second of respite, but time enough for the Flea to thrust the gas cartridge into Zotgjakt's hand. The Thing resumed its onslaught, stretching higher and higher still. Then the cartridge went into place with a "whuff", and Zotgakt fired a continuous stream of flame strong enough to send the Thing reeling with its force alone. Before the flamethrower sputtered dry, the Thing staggered its final, fateful step, and toppled into the unguessable abyss. The Flea, looking over the edge from where he crouched, glimpsed the Thing as it fell, twisting, not merely in painful writhing, but with every appearance of purposeful undulation, as if trying to swim like a porpoise through the air. Then the flaming shape faded into a spark, and he was already retreating at the warning creak of the warming ice.

No one looked back until all three stood on the ridge overlooking the windmills. The cliff had shed at least five meters, and large chunks were still falling at irregular intervals. "Did we kill it?" the Tick panted.

"What do you mean `we'?" the Flea objected.

"Dead or alive, it's buried where nobody can get to it," Zotgjakt said. "That was a berg worth of ice, and God only knows how deep..." He crossed himself, then belatedly returned his companions' stares with a glare. "What? I'm _Catholic_. There's _lots_ of Catholic Albanians. Ever heard of Mother Theresa?"

They trudged to the base of the windmills. "You know," Zotgjakt said, "that was an ambush? And there's something else: That Thing meant to go over. But its survival instincts were too strong to carry off a suicide mission, not without a moment of hesitation. So why would a Thing like that- well, do a thing like that?" Visors traveled, and lit on a dented hatch.

Zotgjakt reloaded, while the Tick edged toward the hatch. The squire only got within a meter of the hatch before it flew open, at the passage of a small Thing that leaped straight up. It was barely a meter tall, with a terror bird head and a stumpy bird's foot that pointed backwards. It flipped and came hurtling down straight at the Flea, who matter-of-factly spiked it like a volley ball, on a trajectory straight into the blades of the windmill that was spinning too quickly.


	8. Alone

**Here's a shorter chapter, mostly a segue, but things will be going very fast from here. For anyone following closely, I've deviated from what was posted in the last chapter, which I'll revise. Plus, I realized yesterday that there's an extra guy I completely forgot about. I'm planning to just cut him, which will be just as well considering what's going to be happening next...**

Zed almost grabbed hold of his attacker- of course, it was Andrews- and wheeled about to give chase. Then he saw Andrews drop through a trapdoor in the floor. After a moment's consideration, he decided that pursuit under the circumstances would carry an excessive risk of ambush, and his first responsibility was to the remaining civilians.

Colby was already in view, standing with an unreadable face. A few steps showed Jackson, still supporting the mutilated Indian, who in addition to the rare combination of third-degree burns and frostbite now had a horrendous wound that had all but split his ribcage, and Thorson and Irene who were still attending to him as if they thought it made a difference. A single bloody "hic" brought a screech from Irene, and clearly marked the Indian's last breath.

"Lay him down," Zaratustra said, and Jackson immediately complied. "You have done enough. Are any of you injured?"

"Thorson got a bloody nose, but that's all," Jackson said. "Andrews must have got loose while we were trying to help Nalesh. The commander tried to grab him, but Nal and I were just standing in the way. I suppose he tried to hit me and got him instead."

Irene looked at Zed almost pleadingly. "You should have grabbed him, and you _have_ to go after him now. He thinks what he tried to do is right, and he will try again as soon as possible. If we hadn't taken his detonator, he could do it right now."

Colby abruptly laughed, a single, cynical "ha". "You _still_ think that was Andrews? The Thing got him, and then it did something crazy to avert suspicion... maybe not just from itself, neither." He glared menacingly at Jackson.

Zed's gaze bored into Colby in turn. "So... Do you mean to say that he planted explosives, by your own account going to some lengths to make them difficult to find or disarm, with _no_ intention of setting them off?"

Colby shifted his feet. "Well... What would those Things have to lose if he _had_ detonated them? Worst case scenario, they freeze, they wait just like the first freak did for a million years, and the next time humans come by, they start everything over again."

Zed nodded. "Conceivable, at the least... And, since you bring it up, it would seem strange if Andrews did not think of the same thing. You must show me where the detonators are stored. There is no danger unless he replaces the first. If I can intercept him, there need be no..."

Abruptly, the lights went out. A few seconds later, the heater followed. Only the blue gleam of Zed's lenses shone in the dark. "Trouble," he said. "_Now_ we have got trouble."

"Hardly seems worth the trouble of burning," the Tick said as he picked up the bird-Thing's severed head. He yelped when it snapped at his hand.

Zotgjakt had finished hosing down the windmill, and turned his carbine on the small pile of body parts. On the squad channel, he muttered, "Zed... come in, Zed... Status, please... Zed, do you read..."

"Why'd it even come over here?" the Flea wondered.

"My guess is, it was the closest place that was warm," the Tick said. He smacked the head against the frame of a windmill, then tossed it in. At that moment, five or six blinding flashes of blue-white light flared through the steel skeleton. The Tick looked back over his shoulder to see the windmill doing its best impression of the Tower of Pisa. "Oh, _kaka!_"

"Do not panic," Zaratustra said authoritatively.

"Nobody's panicking," Irene said.

Colby gave another bitter chuckle. "Yeah, it's not like this hasn't happened before."

"My visor has switched to night vision: infrared plus light enhancement," Zed continued. "There is no need to search for a flashlight, and turning one on may only disrupt natural adjustment to natural light. Whatever Andrews is doing, whatever he is, it is clear he has planned this well in advance. That, Dr. Jackson, is why he went for you, so there would be no surviving technician to deal with this. Now, Mr. Colby says this has happened before. For what reasons, and how did you deal with it?"

"The living quarters, well... From the standpoint of the base design, they're... secondary," Jackson said. Yet another laugh came from Colby. "Look, we were all told before we signed our contracts that we would be down here to maintain the observatory's equipment, not vice versa. If power runs short, heating and lighting to the main living quarters are designed to be first to go. In that event, we withdraw from our regular living quarters into the generator room, which _does_ receive continuous heating and lighting from the geomagnetic generator. So, incidentally, does the comm tower."

"Perfectly sensible," Zed said with a nod, "and it is all the more clear that Andrews has planned carefully- and that shall constrain him. He never intended simply to level the base, and he will not do that now if he can avoid it. His first plan was to destroy the living quarters, and retreat to the generator room. His backup plan- assuming the first was not mere diversion- was to set up a power failure, to occur after he was sequestered in a place that would be unaffected. Now he is running a second contingency. We can only guess its full form, but he will surely try to seal himself in the generator room, and I expect he will do his best to eliminate me..." He fell abruptly silent.

In his infrared visual feed, a dim glow in the rough shape of a man showed where the Indian had fallen. But it was only a residue from the body resting on the floor.

The body itself was gone.


	9. Scramble

The Flea yanked the tick out of the way of a stout strut that crashed down hard enough to gouge the concrete foundation. Then they both ran as the structure came tumbling down like a house of matches. Even as the rain of debris subsided, the fan itself came tumbling out of the wreckage like a loose hubcap. The squires ran faster, and the Tick made surprising gains on the Flea. Unfortunately, then the Tick slipped and slid, knocking the Flea off his feet. They plowed into a snowbank, from which the Tick raised his head, just in time to see the fan overtake them- and, with a slight skip, pass over without leaving a scratch.

Zotgjakt hauled them both to their feet. "This conduit must lead back to the base," he said, pointing to a half-meter-tall tube that stretched out of sight. "We can follow it back. And hurry! Zed could be alone with more of those Things!"

"Yeah," the Tick muttered, "the poor alien bastards..."

"Head for the trap door," Zed said in a firm monotone. "Stay close together. Stay close to me." He audibly removed the clip from his sidearm, though two rounds remained. The Thing was on him in a second.

The chimera seemed to have come from out of an inconsequential alcove that could only have held a man-sized being if it had the benefit of octuple joints and a collapsible spine. The grotesque gait that was all the more appalling in a creature that still bore every outward semblance of a human form left no doubt that this being did. Zed dropped his half-spent clip to grab another a fraction of a second faster. In the same fraction of a second he leveled his gun and fired the single shell in the chamber point-blank into the chimera's human face.

The head virtually disintegrated, but the Thing scarcely broke stride. Already, the hideous rent in its chest was gaping still wider. As the chimera lunged, the whole torso split from top to bottom and back to front, becoming huge jaws complete with jagged teeth. The strike went straight for Zed's gun hand, and even an eye fast enough to follow could not have guessed whether it was by his reflexes or pure happenstance that Zed raised his weapon over his head, just ahead of the massive jaws as they snapped shut.

The exotrooper slapped the fresh clip in the gun as he held it over his head, then with a blow of his knee, he knocked the chimera back enough to take aim. He emptied his weapon as fast as he could pull the trigger, putting at least one right into the cleft of the opening maw. Yet, the solid slugs that came from the gun seemed to have virtually no effect, until thick white smoke began to pour from the creature's wounds. Suddenly, the chimera began to spasm, writhe and stomp in a hideous St. Vitus' dance that ended with it literally tying itself in knots on the floor, the jaws gaping not in a scream but only a belch of smoke and flame. Zed had reloaded with White Phosphorous shells- smoke grenades that also acted as incendiaries.

Zed slapped in another clip as he whirled about, to meet the steady gaze of Irene. Behind her, Thorson stooped by the trap door. "It is locked, but I can open it. Shall we go down?"

"First unlock it, and I shall open it," Zed instructed, striding around the woman. Thorson complied, and Zed heaved the door open. No human heat signature was in sight, but there was a little light, and also a draft of warmth, visible in infrared as wisps of light undulating through the air. "The generator room has been opened... A trap." His visor met Thorson's sad eyes.

"Hey," Jackson said, glaring at Colby, "if Andrews is a Thing, why'd he try to kill Nal, when we know he's a Thing?"

"Don't start on this bull now," Colby snarled. "He sure didn't do a good job, and what would it really mean if he had? Who hasn't heard of the Gestapo trick? Except, for those things, it wouldn't even be wasting their own... more like cutting off a foot to get out of a bear trap."

"To be sure... but the `trick' was never theirs," Zed said. "The secret police never had enough dedicated infiltrators to consider sacrificing them so lightly. More apt to call it a trick of the _Juden_. They were the ones who sacrificed their own, quite often. They managed deportations from the ghettos; they fed the crematoria; they volunteered to be guards in the camps; they even manned the gas chambers..." He straightened, his visor still locked on Thorson.

"But they were not practicing any deception. They were not even acting on a rational strategy of survival. They were, rather, betrayed by their impulse. There have always been two paths to the prize of life: One to kill and conquer; the other to cooperate and conform. If any quality innate to the blood and bone sets them apart from their fellow humanity, it is that they excel at the later. It did not make their people better or worse, but it made them a _threat_. And my people, we turned their deepest impulse against them. Society was recreated, and they conformed to it, as they had for thousands of years. But now, it was to the engine of their own destruction."

Thorson's stare was sad, but not quite shocked. "Please," he said, drawing his jacket more tightly around himself, "whatever you are thinking, you are wrong."

"Then I am wrong," said Zed. He was already raising his gun, but still, he was not prepared when Thorson's arm shot out, ending not in a fist but the bony tail club of a Pleistocene glyptodont. The blow knocked Zed to the floor and sent his helmet flying. Then the Thing that was Thorson retreated, not into the warmth of the basement, but toward the window that overlooked the mountainside beyond the edge of the platform.

Zed had time for a single shot, which he took not with his sidearm but with the spear gun on his left forearm. The harpoon struck the fleeing figure just as it smashed through the glass. The fugitive dropped out of sight for a moment, then was yanked back as Zed reeled in the cable. He holstered his gun long enough to pull with his free hand, until the Thing came crashing back through the remnants of the window. He closed the distance in three strides, drew his gun and fired an explosive slug. Then he fired another, and another, and two more for good measure. Then he tossed the twitching Thing beside the burning carcass and turned.

That was when Colby shouted, and Irene screamed.

"Hurry!" Zotgjakt shouted, pointing to the dome. "We got weapons fire!"

Naturally, the Flea promptly took the lead. Surprisingly, the Tick overtook his commander, but he skidded to a stop and turned, realizing that his superior had slowed to a walk.

"Something's wrong," Zotgjakt said simply. He advanced, but only by cautious steps.

"Hey!" the Flea shouted back, "what's the hold-u-?"

And that was when the dome exploded.


	10. One Two One

**Now here's the twist that made me want to write this fic...**

Andrews stood, almost crouching, with one foot in the trapdoor. One arm was around Irene's neck, and a spike on the head of his ax pressed against her throat. But the eyes of Jackson, Zed, Andrews and even Irene were locked on Colby as he rose, muttering, from the floor, clutching what looked like a gash in his scalp from the glancing blow that had knocked him to the floor. "What?" he said. "That jackass gets one in behind my back, and suddenly everyone looks at me like I'm the bad guy?"

He turned to face his companions. Jackson continued to stare, Irene began to sob, and Andrews abruptly cackled. "What?" Colby said, waving his bloody hand at his attacker. "What the f* 's wrong with you?" It was then that Zed got a clear and conclusive look at the small patch where a bit of Colby's skull had been knocked away to expose his brains.

Jackson finally raised a trembling hand to point in accusation. "You!" he said. "It's you! You're a Thing, man!"

"What? What the f* are you talkin' about?" Colby shouted. "I'm no Thing!" As he jabbed the air in his gesticulations, the nail of his pointing finger grew into a claw. "_You_ are the Thing!"

Irene covered her mouth. "Oh my gawwd..." she whimpered.

Jackson, on the other hand, only stepped forward belligerently. "No, you're the Thing!" Then the claw, and the whole hand behind it, plunged into the chest.

Irene screamed, and Colby roared: _"You're the Thing!"_

Then Jackson struck Colby over the head, with a fist that was suddenly as big as ham and covered in purple scales for some reason. His jaw literally unhinged as he bellowed:_**"YOU'RE THE THING!" **_Then there were no more words, only shrieks, screams, roars and less classifiable sounds as blow followed blow from deadly appendages that multiplied like the heads of the fabled hydra. Irene screamed, and screamed, and screamed again, and Andrews laughed and laughed.

Andrews retreated down the trap door, dragging Irene after him. Zed lunged after them, but had to dive to one side as Colby and Jackson went whirling by. Zed rose to a crouch, only to see the trap door slam and lock. Then he jumped up to avoid the combatants as they came reeling back. The myriad limbs were flailing all the more furiously, but no longer withdrew when they struck. Instead, they sunk in, quickly merging with the flesh they penetrated, so that, even as they battled, the two Things became one.

A terror bird's head slashed at Zed's throat. He ducked under the blow and then retreated, circling the center of the base. The chimera came after him with a chorus of screams. Zed ducked out of the room. As he exited the next room, a crash resounded behind him. A glance back showed a single blue mass shaped like two runners in a three-legged race. The faces of Jackson and Colby were still recognizable, one fused to the other on a pseudopod head that hung below the hunched back. Zed halted at a second trap door. He fired one steel ball slug into the lock, then emptied the clip as he backed out the next door. His visor lit briefly on a wired bundle of explosive charges.

The chimera crashed through the wall of the lookout room on eight hands and feet, with still more stretching out behind it like a dragon in a Chinese New Year's parade. Already, the floor was covered in snow and ice, and the polar winds blew even more forcefully through the broken window than they did outside. The blast of cold all but staggered the chimera. Nothing but distorted vestiges remained of the joined faces of Colby and Jackson, except for the sockets that held three flaring red eyes. This visage shrieked as Zed emptied a fire extinguisher into its eyes. From between the eyes, spiked radula lashed out, but snapped back from the spray which added to the chill. Then Zed retreated yet again, with a spool of wire in one hand.

The chimera skirted the still-burning bodies of Thorson and the Indian, accelerating with the added heat, until it was going even faster than before. It was just starting to slow down again when it caught up with Zed, at the room with the second trap door, just as Zed dropped through it. He unrolled wire behind him, and pulled the trap door down after. He held his grip on the bottom, putting his full strength and weight against claws that scrabbled at the edges, and straining even then. With his free hand, he opened a servo housing and eased the end of a wire toward bare circuitry.

The serpentine form of the chimera twisted almost in a knot as pried with ever more formidable implements at the door. A sloth's claw dented and scraped the metal, but without the full length of a sloth's arm behind it, there was not enough force to lift the door. Then the chimera brought its head to bear, with a newly sprouted set of sabertooth jaws. Slamming down its open maw where the claw had already damaged the metal, it broke both fangs, but put one splintered tooth through the door. Pressing its lower incisors against the door for leverage, it began to pull. As its muscular body twisted, one hand pressed against a bundle of thermite charges.

And then there was light.


	11. Last Being Standing

**One last cliffhanger... I pretty well finished this chapter not too far into last week, but didn't get around to putting the last touches till tonight. I've spent a lot more time on this project than I meant to, but it's been worth it. Final installment, hopefully soon to come...**

For a moment, the visors of Zotgjakt and the squires went black, as their visor's circuitry cut out a flash bright enough to damage the unprotected human eyes. When vision returned, the dome seemed miraculously intact, except... It was moving, pulsing like a disembodies long complete with fiery veins.

As Zed had guessed, Andrews had meant to destroy the living quarters and any living thing in it before he resorted to destroying the rest of the base. To that end, he had planted mainly thermite and other incendiaries in the dome interior. He had hoped that the superheated air moving swiftly through the sealed dome would have a thermobaric effect sufficient either to blow the shell apart or implode it. But Zed's short circuit had disrupted his carefully planned detonation sequence, and much of the gas had vented through the broken window. Thus, the blast had caused numerous tears and one meter-wide hole in the exterior fabric, and extensively fractured the inner insulation shell, but left the basic structure nominally intact. As freezing winds whipped inside and hot air billowed out, the dome throbbed and quivered like the giant balloon it was.

Zotgjakt took two strides forward, and looked ready to break into a run. Then he paused and looked back, to see the squires standing still. "What are you standing there for?" he shouted. "People could be in trouble in there!"

"Ahh... I'm not sure about that," said the Flea.

The Tick was more direct: "Man, if anything lived through that, it's not people."

Just then, a figure burst out of the dome.

Andrews was almost cheerful as he spoke, waving and jabbing with a survival knife for emphasis: "Well, I guess that crowned fellow found my thermite. That'll warm things up for a while." He turned from the open door of the generator room to Irene. "Now, what shall we talk about in the meantime?"

"Please," Irene whimpered, "don't hurt me..."

Andrews laughed. "What do you think I'm going to do? Cut you up? You'd either put yourself back together or grow everything back. But then, how do I prove it?"

Andrews looked over his shoulder at a noise outside. "Well, sounds like maybe we have some company coming," he mused. "Either that crazy f'inback actually managed to blow the dome and live, or the guys in the morgue are getting' uppity."

"You're mad," Irene said coldly.

"Well, that's a bit subjective, isn't it?" Andrews countered. "After all, `sanity' is mostly about adjusting to the realities around oneself. If the world one lives in goes mad, can you blame a man if he's equally mad? When you get right down to it, maybe it's the ones who stay sane that you got to worry about." From the darkness came an eerie scream.

Zed didn't see the attacker until it came out of the darkness, swinging a wooden-handled pick. The raised weapon did not begin to fall before Zed's spear gun pinned the bearer to the wall.

Andrews paced around Irene. "Now, I've been thinkin'... It's pretty clear, even a piece of one of you Things can act for itself. Or, maybe it's still under your control. Either way, there oughta be a way to turn that against you. Take a blood sample, maybe, and test if it runs from a hot needle... Nah. Blood's just single cells suspended in water, if you could function on that level, you'd 'ave taken over the world back in the Pleistocene. There's gotta be some kinda critical mass, a minimum volume necessary to function. Severed limbs should work, but even I admit, that's a bit drastic. Something smaller, maybe... like a finger." Pausing a moment behind Irene, he gave a quick, almost casual slash. She screamed and started to sob.

Andrews circle around and slapped her across the face. "Sniveling skank!" he snarled. She bit her lip, but continued to whimper. Her captor stooped and thrust her little finger in her face. "All that, over this little thing? You know, your kind ain't just different from us; you're _weaker_ than us. You think you're some kinda ultimate survivor just 'cause you can grow whatever you need? You don't know _nothin' _'bout survival. You never had to make do with what you already had. _You_ never had to lose something and live with it. You never had to take the pain, and learn to like it!"

He pocketed the finger and drew a lighter, then ran the flame along his blade. "Now watch... what a real survivor can do! Let's make this a proper experiment, and get ourselves... a control group!" He held out his own pinky, and slashed again. Irene screeched; he only laughed.

Even with his visor, Zed could not get a good look at the squirming shape until he lit a flare. No doubt, it had been human, and male, and that was the most that could be established by casual inspection. As he was examining the tatters of a uniform, the attacker swung again, aiming at his throat. He blocked the blow with his forearm shield, and the head of the pick lodged in the ceramic while the handle disintegrated into splinters. Zed removed the head, a small one only 12 cm long, and a moment's inspection was enough to establish that it was made in the early twentieth century. Beyond reasonable doubt, this was a "corpse" from the BANZARE expedition.

Then he looked at the Thing's abdomen, where his spear had lodged. The waist was narrowing, the midriff stretching, as it meant to tear itself in half. Zed shoved the flare down its throat and turned away. He was out of harpoons, but he could always improvise...

"Oh, speaking of counting," Andrews said, "did you ever count the detonators?" With his mutilated and bleeding free hand, he reached into a dark recess among the machinery and whipped out a detonator, and then struck a button with the hilt of his knife. From the corridor came a single reverberating BOOM, then a crash as a section of the platform collapsed. Debris came smashing through the corridor wall, and in the midst of it was Zed.


	12. Loose Endings

The figure that came streaking out of the burning base was itself in flames. The size and shape were human, but no detail could be made out. The Tick immediately shouted, "Burn it!" But Zotgjakt only stepped to one side, and the Tick himself flinched back after a glimpse of a human face in agony.

The figure staggered for almost ten meters before collapsing. By then, the fire was smoldering more than blazing, and as a cloud of steam as burning flesh met snow further dissipated the heat. Zotgjakt and the squires closed in. A sharp crackling sound came from within the cloud, and Zotgjakt immediately raised the carbine and pumped. Then the Tick shouted: "Oh, _kaka_- Wait!" Zotgjakt and the Flea both turned their heads in confusion. The Tick pointed a trembling finger at a gauge for the auxiliary tanks on his back. "I… I got a _leak_."

"Then get your pack off!" Zotgjakt roared. "Quick!" The Tick began fumbling for the right catches, latches and bolts to undo, and the other two rushed to him to help. That was when a shape came out of the haze.

Even before the transformed figure cleared the steam, its most prominent feature could be clearly seen: three red eyes, shining as bright as the dying flames, near the top of a stout, stumpy shadow barely a meter tall. Then features came into focus: The writhing mane of tentacles, the impossibly flexible limbs, the reverse impressions of hands and feet and _faces_ bubbling up from beneath the blue hide. Above the red eyes, in particular, two emerging faces made the Thing's head swell like the temples of a hydrocephalic, bearing the unmistakable likenesses of Jackson and Colby.

"Take hold of the frame and pull!" Zotgjakt commanded the Flea as he pounded and pried at the last moorings of the storage frame. "When it comes loose, throw it at _that!_"

The Thing staggered, less like an injured or dying creature than a human in an epileptic fit. The spasms grew rapidly worse, bending limbs in unpredictable and often incompatible directions, until the whole that was the Thing could no longer move, but only go through its contortions where it stood. All the while, the malignant swelling grew, until the bulging brow fissioned into two new heads. The human faces contorted as painfully as the alien body, mouthing screams of blasphemy, and from the Thing's own mouth came an agonized cry: _**"WHOOO AAM I-I-I?"**_ Then the chimera drove a sloth's claw into its central eye and sliced down, as if executing the judgment of Solomon on itself.

"Hey-" the Flea started to say as the frame came loose in his hands.

"Throw it!" Zotgjakt bellowed. The squire obeyed, and his throw knocked the Thing to the ground. Then the trio all ran for the garage, Zotgjakt pausing just long enough to send a flicker of flame at the pinned creature. The resulting fireball bored a crater into the ice.

"I was just thinking," the Flea finished, "weren't our stilts in there?"

"You… complete… ass," Andrews snarled as he strode toward Zaratustra with a sledgehammer. His feet splashed in a puddle of water from a dripping pipe. "I had everything under control. Just a few hours, and it would have been over. But you had to come all the way here, and now I'm gonna have to kill you."

Zed raised his head and spoke: "Why bother? If you think none can be allowed to leave, then blow the base and be done with it."

A blow jolted Zed's helmet. "You actually thought I'd do that?" Andrews said, then laughed. "Nuh-uh. That would knock out the observatory, and then they'd send people to fix it right away. Can't have that. And what would be the point? I know I'm human… and I'm getting out of here alive!" He raised the hammer, ready to charge. Then Zed heaved, shifting enough debris to swing his left forearm. A spool for his spear gun unwound, sending a length of cable lashing out as a whip.

Andrews sidestepped, and the cable landed limply in the puddle at his feet.

Andrews grinned. "I know what I am… and I know what they are… but I don't know what the hell you are. I just might take you apart and find ou-" A surge of electricity from Zed's exoskeleton shot through the cable, and Andrews staggered back.

"Drop the weapon, and I shall have to let you live," Zed announced calmly.

"We both know," Andrews said, "things just don't work that way." Then he charged again, bounding over a second lash of the cable, stepping in the puddle… where he staggered, advanced again, then froze, and finally fell. Zed jerked at the cable, dislodging the other end from a thick power from where it had lodged, in the insulation of a thick power cable in the generator room.

With another two minutes of shoving, Zed was free. He looked at Andrews; the dwindling infrared signature alone confirmed he was dead. "He would probably have survived," Zed said, "if he had not fought to keep going… He was human, then."

"Does it grieve you?" Irene asked. Tears streamed from her own eyes.

"No," Zed answered, "I was fairly certain it would be necessary to kill him either way. Does that grieve _you_?" His visor locked with her eyes. Above, there was a crash, followed by tramping feet and half-intelligible shouts.

"Don't you wonder," Irene said softly, "if it might not have been better if the chimerae had won? They must be a peaceful race, by nature. Surely, they must have done much good… Every creature of every world made as one mind, and every world part of a greater mind… And who is to say the creatures did not welcome it, with the joy of a thousand millennia?..."

"Animals," Zed said coldly. Irene stared blankly. "The chimerae assimilated worlds of _animals_, without minds on the level of men, perhaps not even man's nearer kin. And so, the chimerae were unprepared for human minds, already having thought and will and consciousness. Instead of bringing unity to Earth, the chimerae brought discord into themselves."

Zed strode toward Irene. "You were alone, with one of them- a `body' from the BANZARE expedition. Weren't you? When the original chimera escaped, everyone but you ran to investigate. Was that the plan, all along?"

"What if- _I_- knew? What if I was willing?" Irene said. "What if there are others who would gladly join- enough that the chimerae would have no need to assimilate the unwilling?"

"Then those who join will shine like stars among men," Zed said, "and the other men will hate them, and then the other men will kill them." He shrugged. "Things never seem to end well when men are confronted by those who exemplify their virtues."

Irene's gaze was forlorn, but still pleading. "Then, there is something else," Zed said. "The chimerae did not fall to Earth by accident. They came to Earth, in the spirit, perhaps, of missionaries. Another ship followed, or was waiting, and attacked. Perhaps these missionaries lost the fight, or had no time to fight. Perhaps they chose not to fight at all. In any event, their ship was smashed, and when it crashed upon the Earth, a second ship descended to wipe out any survivors. That ship… was also of the chimerae."

Irene shook her head. "You don't understand… _They_ didn't understand…"

"Is it my duty to understand?" Zed said. "Enough to understand this, that even one mind cannot always be of one mind, and every body was members that are shed, and that is what was done to you."

"Zed!" Zotgjakt shouted from the other end of the corridor. "Anyone left?"

Zed turned to raise a warning hand. "Come, but have the squires stay back!" he ordered. "There may be danger of a second collapse!" As he spoke, there was a silky tearing. He turned back as Irene rose, and with a casual swing of the last of his cable, he cut her throat. She froze, clutching her neck. Zed waved Zotgjakt forward without taking his eyes off her, and there was more than a hint of regret as Zotgjakt emptied a tank.

"Aww, man," said the Flea, "I _liked_ her."


	13. Coda

**Okay, just one more little chapter...**

"The nearest bases are Vostok station and the Amundsen-Scott Research Station at the south Pole," Zed announced over the howling wind. "The latter is further off by several hundred kilometers, but much larger, and not far from other stations. We make for it. It appears we shall go to the pole after all."

"You're talking almost twelve-hundred kliks," Zotjakt said. "We could do it, on paper, but we got nothing to spare. And I don't think I need to tell you, nobody's going to be greeting us with open arms."

"We will do it because we must," Zed answered, "and because the measure of my destiny is not yet full."

The Flea sailed by on a sled improvised from a piece of the dome. "Hey, at least it's all downhill- WAAGG!-hooof."

The Tick helped the Flea out of a snow drift. "I'll tell you what," the Tick said, "if you cover my butt, then I suppose I can cover yours."

"Yeah, well," the Flea said, "if you save my butt, then I guess I can't complain if you're a pain in the butt."

Soon, what gear and supplies they could find were consolidated. The wind went into a lull, giving better conditions to hike, but Zed paused to survey the unearthly landscape with a clear field of view. The other three stood beside him as he gazed intently in the direction of Prydz Bay. Surprisingly, it was the Flea who broke the silence with introspection: "Y'know, it's kinda sad. I mean, mostly, they seemed decent enough, and you can't help wondering if they really thought they were human. Hell, the one who was really screwed in the head was the guy who _was_ still human. If there'd been a way to take them back, and make sure they didn't Thingy anybody else, that wouldn'ta been so bad, would it?"

"What I cannot help but persist in thinking about, is the irony," Zed said. "They could have imitated a million life forms on a million worlds... but they couldn't stomach being human."


End file.
